Subject: bug#10489: 24.0.92; dired-do-copy may create infinite directory hierarchy

From: Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 03:18:44 +0100

Hello again,

I'm afraid there are still problems.  I encountered these two:

1. Creating symlinks to parent directories doesn't work anymore.

E.g. if you have a directory "~/test/dir1/", open a dired for "~", go to
"test/", hit S, enter "~/test/dir1/" and hit RET.  You get the error

  dired-create-files: Cannot copy `/home/micha/test' into its subdirectory `/home/micha/test/dir1/test'

But I only wanted a symlink...  This worked in Emacs 23.

2. Symlinks to parent directories (still) lead to ininite loops when
copying containing dir.

To use the above example: just create this symlink from outside Emacs,
so you get e.g. this:

  /home/micha/test/dir1:
  total used in directory 8,0K available 94267456
  drwxr-xr-x 2 micha users 4,0K Mär 22 02:32 .
  drwxr-xr-x 3 micha users 4,0K Mär 22 02:33 ..
  lrwxrwxrwx 1 micha users   22 Mär 22 02:32 test -> /home/micha/test

Now dired "~", and copy "~/test" to "~/test2".  You get a hierarchy

  ~/test2/dir1/test/dir1/test/...

again (the command terminates without error, btw).  And all these
are real directories, and _not_ symlinks!

I also wonder why dired doesn't copy the symlink itself, but copies the
target instead?  This seems to be the case also in other examples.  If I
copy a directory containing any symlinks with dired, copying always
copies the targets of the symlinks.

Michael